


39: The Real Business of Life

by light_source



Series: High Heat [39]
Category: Baseball RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: F/M, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-20
Updated: 2012-03-20
Packaged: 2017-11-02 05:52:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/light_source/pseuds/light_source
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What’s bothering him most is that he’s in no hurry to leave. He’s having a good time in spite of himself; in spite of the knowledge that he needs to get up and get over to the yard, get on with baseball, the real business of life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	39: The Real Business of Life

Tim watches the bank teller whiff through the thirty hundred-dollar bills and then clack the fat bundle lengthwise against the counter.

\- Djou throw this away for me? he asks, pushing the empty envelope across the counter towards her. It’s wrinkled and smudged from banging around in his bag.

He’s three steps towards the door when she calls him back.

\- Mr. Lincecum? This yours?

It’s Megan’s business card, the preprinted phone number scratched out and _732 845 1074_ written above it in green.

//

At the gas station, as he’s fishing his credit card out of his wallet, Tim notices the _RON PAUL REVOLUTION_ bumper sticker on the recently-smashed-looking fender of the car in front of him. He’s seen it somewhere before, but where?

The Ron Paul Revolution, he muses, who is that? - that indie-alt-punk band Z’s been downloading MP3s of? But as his eyes fasten on the way the paint’s peeling away from the wrinkles of deformed metal, he realizes where he’s seen the car and the sticker before: that dent exactly matches the one that the guys at Greulich’s Collision just hammered out of his quarter panel.

As he’s waiting on his pump, watching the numbers fly by like the cherries on a slot machine, Megan emerges trotting from the gas station’s store. She’s wearing tight black pants that end just below her knees and a t-shirt with sleeves so short they’re an afterthought, and her hair looks like it started out as a ponytail but now most of it’s changed its mind.

She’s so intent on what she’s doing that she doesn’t notice him, so he leans back into the shadow of the pump housing and watches her. In the time it takes Tim’s pump to churn out two more gallons, she’s inserted the nozzle in her tank, jammed her gas cap into the handle to prop it ‘on,’ and gone to work with the gas-station squeegee on her dusty windshield.

After Tim’s machine clicks off and he’s replacing the nozzle, the corner of his eye registers the way she’s stopped moving entirely, and when he looks up, Megan’s only a few feet away from him, running her hand over his car’s newly repaired back quarter-panel like a cowboy inspecting the hind leg of a steer.

\- Beautiful work, she says, and she smiles. - Can’t even tell it happened. Where’dja get it done?

Now he wishes he’d put on his sunglasses. The friendly squinting smile she gives him, equal parts blue eyes and bright teeth, is like that moment when the sun hits a mirror and sends back a single blinding ray.

\- Greulich’s, says Tim, - on Raintree?

\- Yeah? she says, her face scrunching up a little, - I heard about them. Not the cheapest, but they do good work. So was I right about how much it’d be?

\- Yeah, says Tim, - but you know, I been meaning to call you, cause it wasn’t actually that much. I owe you some back, he says, - a little over three hundred.

She leans back against the rear door of his car, arms and ankles crossed. The smile she gives him is slower-breaking this time, like the drop of a big slow curveball, and then her eyes wander away from his to the ground, like her mind’s suddenly gone somewhere else.

He feels like an idiot, standing there waiting, not knowing what she’s gonna say.

\- You know, when I woke up this morning, she says, - I knew something good was gonna happen, like money falling out of the sky. So hand it over, dude, she continues, putting out her hand.

\- Can I write you a check? says Tim.  He never carries more than twenty bucks in cash.

\- No checks, remember? says Megan. - I got a strictly cash economy.

//

How they get from the gas station to Rita’s Ice-Custard-Happiness, where they’re sitting outside under the eaves of the strip-mall overhang, is a long story involving two malfunctioning ATMs and exasperated convenience-store clerks and a need to sit down and spread things out on a table. They’re sitting in spindly too-small café chairs with a table between them. Megan’s eating a dish of cantaloupe ice with vanilla custard, and Tim’s got chocolate with raspberry ice, and for a long time they’re both just intent on eating, each of them enjoying the way the cold and fruit and cream come together. The sharp shade’s a welcome respite from the traffic-clogged four-lane across from the parking lot, and from the morning sunlight that has already begun to bake the asphalt and rise in waves around them.

Eventually Megan sighs, her eyes half-shut, and dangles her plastic spoon off the edge of her tongue.

\- That’s gotta be the most mysterious taste in the world, cantaloupe, she says dreamily. - Nothing else quite like it.

Tim’s put his empty paper dish to the side and spread the money out on the table to count it one last time. He’s already been back inside Rita’s twice for singles and coins, because Megan insists on the exact amount: fifteen twenties, one ten, two ones, a quarter and three pennies.

He piles the coins carefully on the stack of bills and pushes the whole thing towards her.

\- If I’da known you were gonna be so impossible about it, he says, rolling his eyes mockingly, - I would’ve just rounded it up to three-twenty.

\- Yeah, but I would’ve known you were lying, says Megan with utter seriousness, pointing her spoon at him and narrowing her eyes. - And besides, she says, scraping her paper dish for the last bit of cantaloupe ice, - we wouldn’t have had to track down an ATM that was actually working, and then get change. And there wouldn’t have been this, she says, pointing her spoon at the Rita’s sign for emphasis, - just like it says, _ice-custard-happiness._ You would’ve just driven off. That’d be it. And you have to admit, she says, leaning towards him and smiling, - this has been kinda fun.

\- And what makes you think I’m not gonna just drive off now that we’ve settled up? says Tim abruptly, surprised and then a little embarrassed by his own brusqueness. That high-school feeling of not-being-enough - that feeling he’s never fully managed to shake - has welled up in his throat. And then there’s something about the way Megan insists on her own terms that reminds him of himself.

But perhaps the thing that's bothering him most is that he’s in no hurry to leave. He’s having a good time in spite of himself; in spite of the knowledge that he needs to get up and get over to the yard, get on with baseball, the real business of life.

\- You haven’t given me the ticket yet, says Megan.

He raises his eyebrows. - Ticket?

\- Yeah, she says. - You work for the Giants, right? I know you guys get free tickets - passes and stuff, right? I’m not asking for favors, she says, looking up at him, - I thought maybe we could swap.

Her lips are pressed together a moment in concentration. He notices there’s a dimple in only one of her cheeks, and one of her eyes is a little wider than the other, the eyebrow lower, as though her face came in two halves that someone put together in a hurry. There’s something about her out-of-breathness, her unevenness - that she’s not poised and perfect and shining like most of the girls he meets - that calms him and intrigues him at the same time.

\- Here’s how it works, says Megan. - Whenever I get a windfall, I always let myself spend part of it - that’s only fair, right? - but my rule is that it can only be the uneven part. So in this case, um, that’d be twelve dollars and twenty-eight cents.

\- So I figure if you fronted me one ticket to a Giants game, she continues, the corners of her eyes curling up as she stuffs an outlaw lock of hair behind her ear, - it wouldn’t cost you anything? But arranging it, right? And then my part of the deal’s I could meet you after the game, or whenever you get off work or whatever, and treat you to dinner. Which has to cost exactly twelve dollars and twenty-eight cents, no more and no less, and must be of my own devising.

\- Exclusive, of course, she adds hastily, - of stuff that’s lying around the kitchen like salt and tabasco sauce and pickles.

As she walks him through this complicated algorithm, he realizes he’s smiling for not exactly any good reason, and then shaking his head a little, his lower lip caught in his teeth.

He’s thinking ahead in the rotation, trying to remember who’s starting when.

\- How bout Thursday? The team’s playing the Cubs? It’s a Zito start, I think - I remember you have a thing for him.

Even though she’s put on her sunglasses, her smile’s still wide enough to be blinding.

\- Oh, man, she says, - _perfect._ I would _love_ that.

Even though he's trying not to, he has to smile back at her, wondering what he’s getting himself into.

\- I’ll leave the ticket at will-call, says Tim, – under your name.

Driving back to the yard, Tim finds himself still smiling for some unknown reason, and at practice he’s buzzing with an energy he can’t account for. Not until he’s buttoning up his jersey does he realize that he still hasn’t told Megan his phone number or his last name.

//

During the game that Thursday, Tim keeps himself so busy in the clubhouse talking to Groeschner about fine-tuning his stretching routine, and Gardy about his slider, and then doing his daily fifteen on the stationary bike, that he never makes his way up to the dugout lip where most of the other players are watching Zito struggle through his third spring-training loss ( L, 0-3, IP 5.0, H 8, R 5, ER 5, BB 3, SO 2).

When Zito comes back into the clubhouse after the fifth, sweaty and despondent, he goes straight from his locker to the showers. Tim knows better than to follow him. Even though spring-training games don’t count - everyone chants this like a mantra, especially when they lose - Zito takes every loss hard. Most pitchers do, even when they get a no-decision. The rage and frustration and disappointment emerge in different ways. Some guys throw things. Some bark at the ballboys or find a reason to swear at the non-roster invitee who’s about to be sent down to the minor-league camp. Others take a bat to the Gatorade dispenser. The older, more reflective ones - the ones who’re secretly wondering if they’re past their prime - tend to punish themselves after the game by doing miles of sprints on the treadmill or the bike.

After a loss, Zito gets quiet - very quiet. If someone tries to talk to him, he’ll wait so long to respond that the questioner’ll wonder whether Zito heard him at all, and then the small dead voice that comes out of Zito makes it clear: talking now’s an effort he can’t afford, because he’s in the grip of something that defies words.

//

He waits five minutes after the last out to call her; they meet up in front of the ticket office, Tim in jeans and Rainbows and a hoodie. They take Megan’s car - she refuses to tell him where they’re going - and as he settles back into the passenger seat, his bare foot up against the glove box, he sees there’s a oblong brass pin poked into the soft vinyl of the dash. It looks vaguely military, like a pair of owlish eyes with a star in the middle, and lots of pointy parts on the edges.

She glances over and sees him looking at it.

\- It’s a cox pin, she explains. - Coast Guard. The girls gave it to me. I keep it there to remind myself.

\- You’re in the Coast Guard? says Tim. There seems to be no end to the unusual things this girl has done.

\- No, no - it’s not like that. I rowed crew at Rutgers - I was V1 coxswain senior year?

Tim has a vague memory of rowing as a sport and what a coxswain is - the Huskies won the women’s NCAA championship his senior year, so it was all over the news. But it’s always seemed like a strange sport to him, a bunch of people sitting together in a flimsy flat-bottomed boat, rowing like Roman slaves just to get up the river faster than everyone else.

\- The coxswain’s the brains of the boat, says Megan, - you have to be small and light and loud, cause you’re in charge of steering and coaching and making sure everyone’s pulling together. Your official title’s ‘Master of the Vessel.’

Now he remembers: the coxswain’s the person who sits in the back of the boat - what’s it called? The stern? - and shouts at the people who’re doing the actual work of rowing.

\- Nice work if you can get it, says Tim, - everyone else has to row like crazy and you get to yell at them? Whose idea was that?

Megan smiles. - It’s not that simple. You have to be in good shape, too, and you have to know what you’re doing. You have to be able to balance things out - the shell’s tippy, it’s not designed for anything but speed - and since you’re the only one facing forward, it’s kind of up to you what happens.

\- And after a regatta win, she adds, - the crew gets to throw the cox in the water. That counts for a lot.

\- So is that what it reminds you of? The pin?

\- Naw, she says, - it’s not like we won the championship or anything. It’s just good times, that pin. I need to remember sometimes. What I can do. What I’ve done. That I know how to get there.

//

At the concession window of the Pitch ‘N’ Putt, the bored clerk hands Megan two tickets in exchange for the ten and two ones. She passes one of the tickets to Tim.

\- That only leaves twenty-eight cents, she says, looking at him crosswise behind her sungasses, - but I’m cheating, I brought a couple things from home.

She unzips the top of her backpack and shows him: there’s a couple of wide, flat chocolate bars, an orange and an apple rattling around in there, and two bottles of water. She tries to hand him one of each, but he’s only got two hands, so he takes the chocolate bar, peels it down, and takes a big bite. He hasn’t eaten since lunch, and the sweet bitterness of it goes right to his head.

\- You don’t want to eat too much before you play, she says, her face settled into a purposeful frown, - miniature golf when properly played is a match to the death, so you gotta keep yourself light. Flip for who goes first?

Tim hasn’t played miniature golf since he was a kid, and now that he’s standing out here on the astro-turf ramp that ends in a tiny windmill, he has to smile. The place is crawing with families and high-school kids on dates, and he barely manages to get his nose out of the way of a drive hit by a pasty-faced crew-cut kid in extra-long shorts who looks like he’d rather be home playing World of Warcraft.

\- Easy there, bud, says Tim to the kid, - save the drives for the real course.

\- Fuck off, asshole, says the kid cheerfully, and when Tim, incredulous, looks over at Megan she’s shaking her head. He has to laugh.

\- Places like this tend to have a contraceptive effect on me, says Megan. The word ‘contraceptive’ so takes Tim by surprise that he muffs the putt and sends the ball caroming off the platform. He looks up at her, his eyes wide.

\- I guess that didn’t exactly come out the way I intended, she says, - I didn’t mean it to sound weird or anything, it’s just that the more time I spend around kids like that, the more I think I shouldn’t breed in captivity.

\- Shut up, you, says Tim with mock intensity, - I know what you’re doing, you’re behind and you figure you can throw me off by saying something crazy.

\- Yeah, she says, - and it worked, didn’t it?  She gives him that slow, knowing curveball of a smile again, one of her teeth just crooked enough to make it a little off-center, and for a moment their eyes catch.

When Tim breaks the gaze, he can't believe he's blushing.

He dinks the ball into the hole behind the miniature barn and when she howls in protest, he flails at her menacingly with his golf club and chases her over to the next hole, a horseshoe dogleg where he’s already plotting about how he’s gonna bank his shots. He’s ahead by one, but she’s matching him on nearly every shot, and he’s worried. They’re both playing for blood.

//

They’re sitting at one of the rainbow-painted picnic tables near the concession area, eating soft-serve ice cream on those puffy cones that look and taste like styrofoam.

\- So why didn’t you tell me, says Megan, - who you really are, Tim _Lincecum_?

Tim nearly drops his cone.

\- I don’t know, says Tim after a few seconds of shocked silence - I guess I thought it didn’t really matter. How’d you figure it out?

\- The guy next to me at the game today had one of those program magazine thingies, she says, - and in the middle of the fourth when the guys came out to rake the infield, I was sneaking a look at it while he was reading, and there you were. A picture and everything. And two whole pages of stuff you’ve managed to do in your young life. Imagine my surprise - the guy whose car I hit turns out to be a starting pitcher with the Giants, and he’s got the winningest record on the team.

\- You’re right, says Tim, letting out a big breath - I should’ve told you. I don’t even really know why I didn’t - it just kinda happened. But you gotta understand. The fan thing, he says slowly, - it’s beyond weird. People think they know you, but they don’t. And there’s a lot of chicks that hang around spring training whose main goal in life is to bang a ballplayer, any ballplayer.

\- I can only imagine, says Megan sarcastically, - what a burden that must be for you.

\- It’s not like that, says Tim in a rush, - and it’s not like I think you’re one of those chicks or anything. It’s just that sometimes you wish you could go back to being a regular person. That way, if somebody likes you, he says, looking down at the concrete, - you know it’s for you and not because they think you’re gonna be famous.

//

When Megan pulls into the players’ lot at the stadium, which is empty except for a golf cart and Tim’s car, they’ve both been quiet for awhile, watching the way the streetlights stripe the car with light and then dark. The windows are down and the night air is warm and soft, and Tim realizes that for the first time in a long time, he feels light and buoyant, as though he’s floating along the surface of a slow-moving river at the height of summer.

As Megan pulls up next to his car and sets the handbrake, she turns to Tim, her right hand rummaging in the kangaroo pocket of her sweatshirt. She pulls something out, and when she opens her hand, he sees it’s two pieces of old-fashioned Bazooka bubble gum.

\- The last twenty-eight cents of the windfall, she says, - in accordance with the rules, I had to spend it. They were actually two for a quarter, but I put the extra three pennies in the dish by the cash register.

Each of them peels off the red, white and blue waxed-paper wrapper and Megan unfolds the tiny comic inside hers - the continuing adventures of Bazooka Joe. Tim’s luckier: instead of a comic, he has a fortune.

\- I bet you get all the bubble gum you can chew at the ballpark, says Megan, popping the pink lozenge into her mouth. She can hardly talk, since she’s grinding her molars against the rubbery mass, but she manages - wass yo’ fo-chun?

Tim reads it slowly and gravely.

_\- You have a remarkable power which you are not using._

\- Wow, says Megan, her gum finally under control, - that’s pretty intense. For a piece of bubble gum.

There’s a few beats of quiet where each can tell that the other’s trying to think of what to say. He can feel her breathing, warm and soft, and he sees the way a few strands of her hair are silhouetted against the streetlight.

\- I’ve got a confession of my own to make, says Megan. - I’m heading back to New Jersey next week. When Tim looks at her she shakes her head. - My lease is up, and things just aren’t happening here for me. Besides, I got an interview with Hyatt next week, and it’s too good to pass up, good salary, benefits, the whole thing, enough to keep me going for awhile till I figure out where I want to be next.

Tim doesn’t give much thought to what he says now - it just comes out in a rush.

\- We’re playing the Mets at Shea in July, he says. - Maybe I could call you, you could come up for a game? It’s not that far from New Jersey, Queens. You been there, right?

\- Yeah, she says, - I been -

But the sentence never gets finished, because Tim’s leaned over and slid one hand around her neck - it’s suprisingly strong and powerful under his fingers - and touched his lips to hers softly. She smells like bubble gum and laundry that’s been out on the line, and her skin’s so smooth, almost powdery, under his touch.

Then he can’t really pretend to be surprised that what he thought was just a polite thanks-for-the-fun-evening kiss is turning into something else entirely, as she breathes into his mouth and her hand, caught up between them, bends around his arm and she lets him pull her in.

He’s kissed girls before, so many he can’t remember their names, but it’s never been like this, with someone so like him that he feels like they’ve been friends forever, with those wiry arms and that funny smile and her crazy, blunt way of talking that's so unlike most girls.

The way she’s fitted her mouth to his, the way their tongues are almost not touching, but then they are, and the way he can feel her heart’s pulsing in the side of her neck, against his fingers, has got him all hard and confused.  He's feeling desperate and happy at the same time, like he feels when the bases are loaded and he gets the batter to ground out into an inning-ending double-play.  He wants to stay, and he wants to run, and he has no idea what's gonna happen next.

He pulls away and looks at her - both her eyes and her mouth are half-open, mirroring his - and then he leans in for one very slow, gentle kiss, taking her upper lip between his and breathing a little moan into her mouth. Their right hands have clasped together, and as he pulls himelf loose from whatever this is and takes a last look in the dark at her eyes, it's like a mysterious door’s opened in front of him, the threshold of something he’s never seen before.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> A temporary aberration, I assure you.


End file.
